


A journey makes sense only with no return

by vogue91



Category: Hey! Say! JUMP, Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Angst, Cars, Character Death, Flashbacks, Love, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 07:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15019712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: Yamada Ryosuke had always been a little too inclined to theatricality.Or, at least, Daiki had always seen it that way.He liked to make big plans, he liked to pontificate on the distant future, and he liked to talk about it as if it was something he was actually going to do, even when it was about stuff clearly out of his reach.





	A journey makes sense only with no return

Yamada Ryosuke had always been a little too inclined to theatricality.

Or, at least, Daiki had always seen it that way.

He liked to make big plans, he liked to pontificate on the distant future, and he liked to talk about it as if it was something he was actually going to do, even when it was about stuff clearly out of his reach.

And he had always loved him for that.

Daiki was in his car.

He didn’t really like to drive, he only did that when forced to.

Silence.

Around him, only the light buzz from the engine. Only the monotonous, muffled noise of tyres on the asphalt.

And nothing else.

It was that silence he hated so much, that made him hope he could suddenly become deaf, so that he could’ve imagined an uproar around him. Instead he was forced to wrap himself into that creepy quietness, in that mortal peace.

He knew all too well that the ghosts from his mind came back to haunt him at the worst possible moment. He wished he could’ve avoided thinking altogether, managing to forget what he was doing and _why_ he was doing it.

An image came back to him, of the last time Ryosuke had been sitting on the passenger sit of that same car.

Daiki remembered perfectly the details of their last trip together.

Of the last time his car had been full of noise, of colours, of all the cheerfulness the younger brought with himself.

The last time. And he had discovered he remembered the details only when his mind had surrendered to the fact that he wasn’t going to have that anymore.

 

_“I think that the guy who gave you… or, well, who gifted you with your driver’s license is very likely to get the death penalty.” he told him, laughing. Daiki winced and shook his head._

_“At least I got my driver’s license, Ryo.” he replied, but he wasn’t really bothered by his comment. They were headed toward the Chiba prefecture, and the landscape around them was starting to show the signs of their arrival to the sea._

_Not that Daiki was really looking around; when he drove, it was like he had an intimate relationship with the road, and all he could see was a grey layer to cover to reach his destination._

Yamada had always hated that about him. Daiki travelled to get there, while he knew perfectly that the younger did that just for the sake of it.

As brief as the road from Tokyo to Chiba was, Arioka remembered that his boyfriend had gotten more and more excited, even just by something so simple as to get in the car and take off.

Now that he wasn’t there, now that he was alone in that too big and too quiet car, Daiki felt like screaming.

He tried to spot details of the landscape on his own, because there was no one who was going to do it for him, because he felt like he owed it to Ryosuke, somehow, that it was important for him to do it.

 

_“Come on, Dai-chan, enjoy the surroundings! You never do that, you drive like a robot and you don’t tear your eyes from the road until we’ve arrived!” Ryosuke complained, a cheerful tone still in his voice._

_“Well, if my driving is as bad as you say, it’s better that I keep my eyes on the road, isn’t it, Ryo?” he asked, sly, unwilling to cave to his boyfriend’s enthusiasm._

There were things in which he and Yamada were completely opposite, and Daiki had always thought that that was what kept them so close.

Was it that he was serious while Ryosuke took everything as a game, was it his being level-minded where the other was reckless.

That where one was quite reluctant to give in to romanticism, the other filled the gap without even worrying about being inappropriate.

And now that Daiki felt his half missing, he was scared of doing the wrong thing, scared of walking an uncharted territory, scared of disappointing him, somehow, and not meet his expectations.

 

_“Dead?” he had murmured, as if that single word could break the spell which had enclosed him in a comfortable embrace._

_“Arioka-san, it’s been an accident. A hit-and-run.” the policeman on the phone had gone on, but he hadn't let him finish._

_“Fine. I got it. I’m coming.” he had said, the voice of whom is hanging in a nightmare which he wished he didn’t understand, surrounded by images pushing hard to break the levee of his mind._

During the following days he had wondered often what the man who had so brutally taken his life was watching. If he was looking around, like Ryosuke loved to do, forgetting about the road in front of him and the people who kept moving, which he had so clearly ignored.

But he refused to allow that monster anything to make him similar to Ryo.

He refused to think that it could’ve actually been just a moment of distraction, the fatal moment which had taken all he had away from him.

Now Daiki was back on the road they had been on together, he was back into that landscape that Ryo loved so much, he was back to that sea and that thin sand framing the coast, but he was getting back there as a defeated man.

And then he stopped the car, when he recognized the same spot where they had rested, a few months before.

It was winter, now.

The beach was deserted, the sea as grey as the sky, and the wind was frozen cold, but it was like he couldn’t feel it.

He got off the the car, bringing along an urn containing the last touchable remains of the man he had loved and that he would've loved forever, he held tight on to it, almost as if he wasn’t ready to let it go.

He wondered if that was what Ryosuke would've wanted.

They had never talked about stuff like that, they had never had a reason to, because they were still young and feeling indestructible, as is typical of their age.

And yet somehow he felt it was the right thing to do, that it was what Ryosuke would've wanted, that perhaps he would've looked at him with that mocking smile of his, but that deep down he would've been happy.

He took a few steps on the sand, and once he had reached the shore he opened the lid, hesitating.

He let go of Ryosuke’s ashes in the wind.

The air got stained in black and he started crying, because it was unavoidable.

It was like this that it had to be.

Now Ryo was free, free from constrictions, from the elegantly decorated walls of the urn, free in that cold wind that, Daiki knew it, wouldn’t have stopped him in life either.

He fell on his knees, then, but he tried to recover quickly.

He didn’t allow himself too long to look, knowing that if he had lingered even one more second, his heart and his eyes would've prevented him from ever going away.

He slowly got back on the car, and took off as if nothing had happened.

He had done something which had made him living proof of the existence of Yamada Ryosuke, done something which he would've been proud off, worthy of those theatrical ways Daiki had always despised so much.

And he had decided he was going to do everything in his power for the man he loved to keep living through him, for his voice to stay clear inside his mind.

_“For once, try and enjoy the journey, Dai-chan.”_

He forced himself to forget about the asphalt, to forget about the steering wheel under his hands, imagining to be alone in that place, without the car, without boundaries between him and what was outside.

He found himself in places that he had watched a thousand times, but that he had never truly seen. Now everything was vivid, like a photograph burned inside his mind.

They were all places and details which were important now, and only because Ryosuke had been happy there.

He wished he didn’t have to go back to Tokyo anymore. He wished he could’ve ignored the road signs and keep wandering through those roads, without even knowing where they led to.

As a travelling companion a man who didn’t live anymore, but who kept existing, and was going to do that forever.

There wasn’t going to be need for tears anymore, because he was only at the beginning of his journey, and he knew that Ryosuke had just been faster than him, that he was already at the next stop, that he was waiting for him. One day he was going to meet him, and they would've finally taken off together again.

And he would've shown him what he had learnt, how good he had become at looking around, ignoring the road beneath himself and thinking about what he was going through more than his destination.

And Ryosuke would've laughed and would've told him he had been an idiot not realizing it before, that he had been an idiot to focus so much about useless stuff, losing sight of all the beautiful things around him.

And Daiki was going to accept that defeat, because the younger had always been better than him.

But now he had time to become someone Yamada Ryosuke would've been proud of.

_“What’s important is not where you’re going, Daiki. But how you get there.”_

Daiki drove, and even though he was now sure that destination didn’t matter, he couldn’t help but being in a rush.

It didn’t matter how long it was going to take him, because after all he knew that one day he was going to meet his Ryo.


End file.
